Piece Of My Heart

by Peter Robinson

  Finally, he knocked on the door.

  Nothing happened, so he knocked again, harder this time.

  When it seemed that no one was going to answer, the door opened and a figure stood there, looking anxious. It was hard to say whether it was Vic Greaves or not, as Banks only had the old group photographs to go by, when Greaves had been a promising twenty-something rock star. Now he must be in his late fifties, Banks thought, but he looked much older. Round-shouldered with a sagging stomach the size of a football, he wore a black T-shirt with a silver Harley Davidson on the front, baggy jeans and no shoes or socks. His eyes were bruised and hollow, his dry skin pale and lined. He was either bald or shaved his head regularly, and that accentuated the boniness of his cheeks and the hollowness of his eyes. He looked ill to Banks, and light-years from the pretty young boy all the girls adored, who had set the career of the Mad Hatters in motion.

  “I’m looking for Vic Greaves,” Banks said.

  “He’s not here today,” the man said, his expression unchanging.

  “Are you sure?” Banks asked.

  This seemed to puzzle the man and cause him some distress. “He might have been. He might have been, if he hadn’t been trying to go home. But his car’s broken down. The wheels won’t work.”

  “Pardon?”

  Suddenly, the man smiled, revealing a mouthful of stained and crooked teeth, with the odd gap here and there, and said, “He’s nothing to do with me.” Then he turned and walked back inside the house, leaving the door wide open. Puzzled, Banks followed him. The door led straight into the front room, the same as it did in Banks’s own cottage. Because the curtains were closed, the downstairs was in semidarkness, but even in the poor light Banks could see that the room was cluttered with piles of books, newspapers and magazines. There was a slight odor of sour milk about the place, and of cheese that had been left out of the fridge too long, but a better smell mingled with it: olive oil, garlic and herbs.

  Banks followed the man through to the back, which was the kitchen, where a bit more light filtered in through the grimy windows and past half-open floral curtains. Inside, the place was spotlessly clean and neat, all the pots and pans gleaming on their wall hooks, dishes and cups sparkling in their glass-fronted cupboards. Whatever Greaves’s problem was – and Banks believed he was Greaves – it didn’t stop him from taking care of his home better than most bachelors Banks had known. The man stood with his back to Banks, stirring a pot on the gas range.

  “Are you Vic Greaves?” Banks asked.

  No answer.

  “Look,” said Banks, “I’m a police officer. DCI Banks. Alan, my name is Alan. I need to talk to you. Are you Vic Greaves?”

  The man half turned. “Alan?” he said, peering curiously at Banks. “I don’t know who you are. I don’t know any Alans. I don’t know you, do I?”

  “I just told you. I’m a police officer. No, you don’t know me.”

  “They weren’t really meant to grow so high, you know,” the man said, turning back to his pot. “Sometimes the rain does good things.”

  “What?”

  “The hillsides drink it.”

  Banks tried to position himself so that he could see the man’s face. When the man half turned again and saw him, he looked surprised. “What are you doing here?” he asked, as if he had genuinely forgotten Banks’s presence.

  “I told you. I’m a policeman. I want to ask you some questions about Nick Barber. He did come and talk to you, didn’t he? Do you remember?”

  The man shook his head, and his face turned sad for a moment. “Vic’s gone down to the woods today,” he said.

  “Vic Greaves is in the woods?” Banks asked. “Who are you?”

  “No,” he said. “He had to get some stuff, you know, he needed it for the stew.”

  “You went to the woods earlier?”

  “He sometimes walks there on nice days. It’s peaceful. He likes to listen to the birds and look at the leaves and the mushrooms.”

  “Do you live here alone?”

  He sighed. “I’m just passing through.”

  “Tell me about Nick Barber.”

  He stopped stirring and faced Banks, his expression still blank, unreadable. “Someone came here.”

  “That’s right. His name was Nick Barber. When did he come? Do you remember?”

  The man said nothing, just stared at Banks in a disturbing way. Banks was beginning to feel thoroughly unnerved by the entire experience. Was Greaves off his face on drugs or something? Was he likely to turn violent at any moment? If so, there was a handy rack of kitchen knives within his reach. “Look,” he said, “Nick Barber is dead. Somebody killed him. Can you remember anything about what he said?”

  “Vic’s gone down to the woods today,” the man said again.

  “Yes, but this man, Nick Barber. What did he ask you about? Was it about Robin Merchant’s death? Was it about Swainsview Lodge?”

  The man put his hands over his ears and hung his head. “Vic can’t hear this,” he said. “Vic won’t hear this.”

  “Think. Surely you can remember? Do you remember Swainsview Lodge?”

  But Greaves was just counting now. “One, two, three, four, five…”

  Banks tried to talk, but the counting got louder. In the end, he gave up, turned away and left. He would have to come back. There had to be a way of getting some answers from Vic Greaves.

  On his way out of the village, Banks passed a sleek silver Merc, but thought nothing of it. All the way back to the station he thought about the strange experience he had just had, and even Pink Floyd’s “I Remember a Day” on the stereo could not dispel his gloom.

  “Kev. What have you dug up?” Annie Cabbot asked, when a dusty and clearly disgruntled DS Templeton trudged over to her desk and flopped down on the visitor’s chair early that afternoon.

  Templeton sighed. “We ought to do something about that basement,” he said. “It’s a bloody health hazard.” He brushed some dust off his sixty quid Topman distressed jeans and plonked a collection of files on the desk. “It’s all here, ma’am,” he said. “What there is of it, anyway.”

  “Kev, I’ve told you before not to call me ma’am. I know that Detective Superintendent Gervaise insists on it, but that’s her prerogative. A simple ‘guv’ will suffice, if you must.”

  “Right, Guv.”

  “Give me a quick run-down.”

  “Top and bottom of it is,” said Templeton, “that there was no full investigation, as such. The coroner returned a verdict of accidental death, and that was the end of it.”

  “No reservations?”

  “Not so far as I can tell, Guv.”

  “Who was in the house at the time?”

  “It’s all in that file, there.” Templeton tapped a thick buff folder. “For what it’s worth. Statements and everything. Basically, there were the band members, their manager, Lord Jessop, and various assorted girlfriends, groupies and hangers-on. They’re all named on the list, and they were all questioned.”

  Annie scanned the list quickly and put it aside. Nothing, or no one, she hadn’t expected, though most of the names meant nothing to her.

  “It happened after a private party to celebrate the success of their second album, which was called – get this – He Whose Face Gives No Light Shall Never Become a Star.”

  “That’s Blake,” Annie said. “William Blake. My dad used to quote him all the time.”

  “Sounds like a right load of bollocks to me,” Templeton said. “Anyway, the album was recorded at Swainsview Lodge over the winter of 1969-1970. Lord Jessop had let them convert an old banquet room he didn’t use first into a rehearsal space and then into a private recording studio. Quite a lot of bands used it over the next few years.”

  “So what happened on the night of the party?”

  “Everybody swore Merchant was fine when things wound up around two or three o’clock, but the next morning the gardener found him floating on his back, naked, in the pool. The postmort
em found a drug called Mandrax in his system.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Search me. Some kind of tranquilizer?”

  “Was there enough to kill him?”

  “Not according to the pathologist. But he’d been drinking, too, and that enhances the effects, and the dangers. Probably been smoking dope and dropping acid, as well, but they didn’t have toxicology tests for them back then.”

  “So what was the cause of death?”

  “Officially, he slipped on the side of the swimming pool, fell in the shallow end, smashed his head on the bottom and drowned. The Mandrax might have slowed down his reactions. There was water in his lungs.”

  “What about the blow to the head? Any way it could have been blunt-object trauma?”

  “Showed impact with a large flat area rather than a blunt object.”

  “Like the bottom of a swimming pool?”

  “Exactly, Guv.”

  “What did the party guests say?”

  “What you’d expect. Everyone swore they were asleep at the time, and nobody heard anything. To be honest, they probably wouldn’t have even noticed if they were all full of drugs and he just fell in the pool. Not much to hear. He was already unconscious from hitting his head.”

  “Any speculation as to why he was naked?”

  “No,” said Templeton. “But it was par for the course back then, wasn’t it? Hippies and all that stuff. Free love. Orgies and whatnot. Any excuse to get their kit off.”

  “Who carried out the investigation?”

  “Detective Chief Inspector Cecil Grant was SIO – he’s dead now – but a DS Keith Enderby did most of the legwork and digging around.”

  “Summer 1970,” said Annie. “He’ll be retired by now, most likely, but he might still be around somewhere.”

  “I’ll check with Human Resources.”

  “Kev, did you ever get the impression, reading through the stuff, that anyone put the kibosh on the investigation because a famous rock band and a peer of the realm were involved?”

  Templeton scratched his brow. “Well, now you come to mention it, it did cross my mind. But if you look at the facts, there was no evidence to say that it happened any other way. DS Enderby seems to have done a decent enough job under the circumstances. On the other hand, they all closed ranks and presented a united front. I don’t believe for a minute that everyone went to sleep at two or three in the morning and heard nothing more. I’ll bet you there were people up and about, on the prowl, though perhaps they were in no state to distinguish reality from fantasy. Someone could easily have been lying to protect someone else. Or two or more of them could have been in it together. Conspiracy theory. The other thing, of course, is that there was no motive.”

  “No strife within the band?”

  “Not that anyone was able to put their finger on at the time. Again, though, they weren’t likely to tell the investigating officers about it if there was, were they?”

  “No, but there might have been rumors in the music press. These people lived a great deal of their lives in the public eye.”

  “Well, if there was anything, it was a well-kept secret,” said Templeton. “I’ve checked some of the stuff online and at that time they were a successful group, definitely going places. Maybe if someone dug around a bit now, asked the right questions… I don’t know… it might be different.”

  “Why don’t you see if you can track down this Enderby, and I’ll have a chat with DCI Banks.”

  “Yes, Guv,” said Templeton, standing up. “Want me to leave the files?”

  “Might as well,” said Annie. “I’ll have a look at them.”

  Thursday, 18th September, 1969

  Rick Hayes’s Soho office was located above a trattoria in Frith Street, not too far from Ronnie Scott’s and any number of sleazy sex shops and strip clubs. Refreshed by an espresso from the Bar Italia across the street, Chadwick climbed the shabby staircase and knocked at the glass pane on the door labeled HAYES CONCERT PROMOTIONS. A voice called out for him to come in, and he entered to see Hayes sitting behind a littered desk, hand over the mouthpiece of his telephone.

  “Inspector. What a surprise,” Hayes said. “Sit down. Can you just hang on a moment? I’ve been trying to get hold of this bloke forever.”

  Chadwick waited, but instead of sitting, he wandered around the office, a practice that he found usually made people nervous. Framed signed photos of Hayes with various famous rock stars hung on the walls, unfamiliar names, for the most part: Jimi Hendrix, Pete Townsend, Eric Clapton. Filing cabinets stuffed with folders. He was opening drawers in a cabinet near the window when his snooping obviously made Hayes worried enough to end his phone call prematurely.

  “What are you doing?” Hayes asked.

  “Just having a look around.”

  “Those are private files.”

  “Yes?” Chadwick sat down. “Well, I’m a great believer in not wasting time sitting around doing nothing, so I thought I’d just use a bit of initiative.”

  “Have you got a search warrant?”

  “Not yet. Why? Do I need one?”

  “To look at those files you do.”

  “Oh, I shouldn’t think there’s anything there of interest to me. The reason I’m here is that you’ve been lying to me since the moment we met, and I want to know why. I also want to know what you have to do with the murder of Linda Lofthouse.”

  “Linda Lofthouse?”

  “Don’t play games with me, laddie,” Chadwick snarled, his Glaswegian accent getting stronger the more angry he became. “You’ll only lose. That’s the victim’s name.”

  “How was I to know?”

  “It’s been in the papers.”

  “Don’t read them.”

  “I know, they’re all full of establishment lies. I don’t care whether you read the papers or not. You saw the body at Brimleigh. You were there at the scene even before I arrived.”

  “So?”

  “You were in a perfect position to mislead us all, to tamper with evidence. She was right there, lying dead at your feet, and you told me you hadn’t seen her before.”

  “I told you later that I might have seen her backstage. There were a lot of people around and I was very busy.”

  “So you said. Later.”

  “Well?”

  “There were two important things I didn’t know then, things you could have told me but didn’t.”

  “You’ve lost me. What are you talking about?”

  Chadwick counted them off on his fingers. “First, that the victim’s name was Linda Lofthouse, and second, that you knew her a lot better than you let on.”

  Hayes picked up a rubber band from his desk and started wrapping it around his nicotine-stained fingers. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, and his lank hair needed a wash. He was wearing jeans and a red collarless shirt made of some flimsy material. “I’ve told you everything I know,” he said.

  “Bollocks. You’ve told me bugger all. I’ve had to piece it all together from conversations with other people. You could have saved me a lot of trouble.”

  “It’s not my job to save the fuzz trouble.”

  “Enough of that phony hippie nonsense. It doesn’t suit you. You’re a businessman, a filthy capitalist lackey, just like the rest, no matter how you dress and how infrequently you wash. You knew Linda Lofthouse through Dennis Nokes, the house on Bayswater Terrace, Leeds, and through her cousin Vic Greaves of the Mad Hatters. You also knew Linda’s friend Tania Hutchison, the girl she was with at Brimleigh, but you didn’t bother to tell us that, either, did you?”

  Hayes’s jaw dropped. “Who told you all this?”

  “That doesn’t matter. Is it true?”

  “What if it is?”

  “Then you’ve been withholding important information in a murder investigation, and that, laddie, is a crime.”

  “I didn’t think we were living in a police state yet.”

  “Believe me, if we were, you’d know the diffe
rence. When did you first meet Linda Lofthouse?”

  Hayes glowered at Chadwick, still playing with the rubber band. “At Dennis’s place,” he said.

  “When?”

  “I don’t know, man. A while back.”

  “Weeks? Months? Years?”

  “Look, Dennis is an old mate. Whenever I’m in the area I drop by and see him.”

  “And one time you did this, you met Linda?”

  “That’s right. She was staying at Dennis’s.”

  “With Dennis?”

  “No way. Linda was untouchable.”

  So it looked as if Nokes was telling the truth about that, at least. “This would have been the winter of 1967, early 1968, right?”

  “If you say so.”

  “How often have you seen her since?”

  “Just a couple of times, you know.”

  “No, I don’t. Enlighten me.”

  “I’ve done some concerts with the Hatters, and she was at one of them. I met her up at Dennis’s again, too, but I didn’t, like, know her or anything. I mean, we weren’t close. We were just around the same scene sometimes, like lots of other people were.”

  “So why did you lie about knowing her if it was all so innocent?”

  “I don’t know, man. I didn’t want to get involved. You guys would probably take one look at me and think I did it. Besides, every minute I was standing around in that field I was losing money. You don’t know what this business is like, how hard it is just to break even sometimes.”

  “So you lied because you thought that if you told the truth I’d keep you from your work and you’d lose money?”

  “That’s right. Surely you can understand that?”

  “Oh, I can understand it well enough,” said Chadwick. “You’re speaking my language now. Concern over money is a lot more common than you think.”

  “Then…?”

  “What were you doing after you introduced Led Zeppelin on Sunday night?”

  “Listening to their set whenever I had a moment. They were incredible. Blew me away.”